Interview with Barbara Walters

Barbara Walters is the queen of keeping it together. Her autobiography, which she’s flogging tirelessly around the country, could be summarized this way: Lots of crap thrown at her over many years. Crap handled. Success ensues. She’s survived the deep odds of the network viper pits and ended up writing her ticket. Browbeaten by her grumpy male co-anchor a few decades ago? The View! Take THAT!

Friends of hers say she’s sacrificed a more contented life to get where she is.

Even though there’s some self-deprecation and self-doubting in her book, the overall sense of Barbara – in the book, on the air, in person – is that she has her s- shellacked and tied down and don’t even think about trying to muss it up. Barbara knows exactly what she wants to say, how and when. Even happy or sad reminiscences seem explicitly measured out and repeated precisely.

She’ll smile, say what she planned and look right through you. Or maybe she’ll just nod and say nothing, which is what happened to one rattled woman doing an interview with her who tried to make some small talk beforehand.

Even when interviewers throw curves and sliders and change-ups, she follows the advice Arnold used to tell Hollywood celebs when he was still one of them and considered the shrewdest at handling the press: Answer the question you wanted to be asked, not the one you’re asked. Besides, don’t try to kid a kidder. She’s done more interviews than 1,000 smooth-cheeked Evening Magazine feature reporters trying to tease her out from underneath her public self.

A few months ago I saw her at a Manhattan restaurant huddled at a booth with Whoopi Goldberg. Maybe she let it out there, I don’t know.

So I tried to pierce the armor myself for a minute or two before a City Arts & Lecture appearance last week. Barbara was plenty pleasant as they brought in 800 copies of her book – someone whispered she could sign that many in half an hour, faster than anyone else. But the only dent I made was when I brought up a scene in her book where she’s an 8-year-old ogling a gas station attendant in his underwear. Say what?